Joana Cotar, January 31, 2019, Internet

Joana Cotar

General Data Protection Regulation

German Bundestag, January 31, 2019, Plenarprotokoll 19/77, pp. 9056-9057

[Joana Cotar is an Alternative für Deutschland Bundestag member from the central German state of Hessen. She is a communications manager and since 2016 has been the AfD’s social media manager. The General Data Protection Regulation is a European Union law in effect since the spring of 2018. Cotar here introduces a motion calling for extension of media privileges to those outside of professional journalism and institutions, the issue involving the reconciliation or adaptation of the EU law to German law. The EU law’s Article 85, paragraph 1 reads: “Member States shall by law reconcile the right to the protection of personal data pursuant to this Regulation with the right to freedom of expression and information, including processing for journalistic purposes and the purposes of academic, artistic or literary expression.”] 

Right honorable Frau President. Right honorable colleagues. 

The AfD motion presented today concerns itself with the General Data Protection Regulation [Datenschutz-Grundverordnung (DSGVO)]. Already before the DSGVO took effect in Germany, we of the AfD forewarned of the fact that it went too far. The EU and you, worthy colleagues of the old parties, wanted to hit the big game: you aimed at Facebook, at Google, at big business, without being always exactly concerned with data defense. Data defense in this regard is important and we agree with you. But, unfortunately, it is not left there. The DSGVO impacts also, and before all, the little guy, the small, mid-level business, the private website operator, the blogger, the influencer, the You-Tuber, the independent street photographer and many others. 

            Manuel Höferlin (FDP): The poor, little AfD politician! 

Important questions of detail are not clarified by the regulation and, as before, the public’s legal insecurity is great. Yet nothing is undertaken in the German Abmahnin­dustrie [Abmahnung: literally, warning; procedure between private parties similar to cease-and-desist order] –  

Jens Zimmermann (SPD): Aha! That’s interesting. But you said something entirely different. 

- and the disagreements of the officials were hitherto incomprehensible. Stefan Brink, Baden-Württemberg’s data defense commissioner, lately declared to Spiegel that the supervisory officers had plainly required “ a bit of a head-start” and now announces to a great extent the penalties: five-figure fines will no longer be the exception. 

This also involves legal insecurity, because the German government has let it slip that it will make general use of Article 85, paragraph 1, of the DSGVO containing the adaptation instructions.  

            Tankred Schipanski (CDU/CSU): Rubbish! 

The EU has expressly maintained that the member states can and should, through use of legal prescription, reconcile data defense with the right to free expression of opinion and freedom of information. The federal government, on one hand, is of the opinion that such a general adaptation is unnecessary. It references the basic law [Grundgesetz] and copyright law. On the other hand, at the federal and state levels special decrees would be issued for the defense of freedom of opinion. These however are confined to the institutional press and professional journalists whose reporting will not be endangered.

            Tankred Schipanski (CDU/CSU): Right and good.

Excluded remain the groups that I previously mentioned who, however, likewise contribute decisively to the democratic discourse: - 

            Tankred Schipanski (CDU/CSU): On very good grounds. 

- the blogger who occupies himself with present-day political issues, the press spokesman of an organization, the socially active artist. 

            Manuel Höferlin (FDP): Or politicians! 

For all these is there no declared legal status; they must fear warnings and prosecution. Even today, the Bundestag itself does not know which regulations pertain to it; the research service has stated this in a letter to the delegations and members. 

            Tankred Schipanski (CDU/CSU): We know it.

It is incomprehensible when the Interior Ministry announces that specific legal adaptations for the defense of discourse participants may not be necessary and yet at the same time, in the second data defense adaptation and adjustment law, exactly such special defense terms are foreseen but only for Deutsche Welle and its journalists. A double standard is employed here, ladies and gentlemen, and it is precisely that which we of the AfD want stopped.

Such adaptation decrees must pertain to discourse participants as in professional journalism. Other countries have made use of this same latitude which the EU has given them. We require exactly that for Germany. The AfD is not alone as to this requirement. Since the passage of the DSGVO, the recognized data defense legal experts of the German lawyers union have criticized the federal government’s lack of willingness to form and convert in the sense of the openness clause. They have even spoken of considerable intimidation effects since the enactment of the DSGVO. 

            Manuel Höferlin (FDP): Hypocrisy! 

The Regulation, together with other constructs, acts like a dark alley upon persons without legal training. We recall the #blogsterben [#blogdeath]. Not a few websites and blogs have left the internet since May 2018 or are only operable in reduced form.           

            Manuel Höferlin (FDP): That is just hypocritical! You want something entirely
            different! 

Shame on him who thinks it evil,

A scoundrel who thinks perhaps

That even was the purpose. 

[Ein Schelm, wer Böses dabei denkt,

Ein Schelm, wer denkt, dass das vielleicht
Sogar Absicht war.]

No one here would in any way be opposed should the legal insecurities be removed and the intimidations were not deliberate. Instead of waiting five or six years for the courts in cases of precedent to clarify which interpretation of the DSGVO is now correct, the government should act. The AfD requires that media privileges be extended to bloggers, photographers and those active in the public sphere. This adaptation harms no one, yet helps quite a number of active and engaged citizens. 

Dear colleagues, show here and now that you stand for freedom of opinion and freedom of information and vote for our motion. And because we know that a vote for a motion from the oh-so-evil AfD is actually out of the question, we have this time made it especially simple for you. When you vote, then before all, you vote with the capable legal experts of the German lawyers union. That should make it practically possible for so important an issue. Let us together commit to a measured balance between data defense and the interest of openness!

[Translated by Todd Martin]